Emerald AI has achieved unicorn status after raising $150 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round, bringing the company's valuation to $1.05 billion. The financing was co-led by Energize Capital and DCVC, with participation from a broad group of technology, energy and financial investors.

The Washington, D.C.-based company focuses on one of the major challenges facing the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence: electricity demand from data centers. Its software is designed to dynamically manage AI workloads and onsite energy resources, allowing data centers to adjust their power consumption when electricity grids are under stress.

Emerald AI says its technology has completed five demonstrations globally and has now moved into commercial deployment at multi-megawatt, full-data-center scale. The company plans to use its new funding to expand commercial deployments with AI companies, data center operators and electric utilities.

The company estimates that its approach could potentially unlock more than 100 gigawatts of capacity on the existing U.S. power grid for AI infrastructure. That figure is an estimate from Emerald AI rather than a measurement of currently available capacity.